Tag: blog

I work Saturdays in a shop on H____ Road in Hull. Let’s call the shop Oddbury’s. Every Saturday I write down the funny things I hear. These are real conversations with real people about the things they’re buying and what they mean to them. Names have been changed to protect people’s identities. Paul is my co – worker.

Neither Paul nor Jim move a muscle. Jim is leaning on the counter and rolling a cigarette. He glances at Paul. Paul is meticulously rearranging boxes of cigarette papers on the counter so that they are all stacked neatly. He glances at Jim. They both glance at me.

After wrestling the boxes through the doorway they are placed in front of the counter. Assi sits down on one of them and dabs his brow with a handkerchief. He is of indeterminate age but on one of his birth certificates it says that he was born in 1969.

Assi: Got some quality stuff to go out Paul.

Paul: Did you get any mouse traps off that guy?

Assi: No. No mouse traps.

Paul: Tsk! I told you Assi. There’s an infestation of mice down here at the moment. People are coming in every day asking for mouse traps. I promised that woman with the three legged cat that I’d get her some.

Assi: Who was that?

Paul: That woman whose cat had to have it’s back leg amputated. It can’t keep up with the mice anymore.

Assi: No, I didn’t get any today cos the thing is the guy who I know who gets me the mouse traps was in Leeds today so I’ve phoned him but then he didn’t phone me back but I spoke to his brother but his brother works out at Huddersfield but he’s in Leeds so you know, so you know… so no. but I got these instead:

He opens one of the boxes with a pen – knife and folds back the lid.

Assi: Thomas the Tank Engine innit?!

He hands around boxes containing models of small, blue plastic trains. The trains are blue but that is their only resemblance to Thomas the Tank Engine. It’s face looks more like someone has painted a picture of Edwina Curry on the front of a train.

Paul: Well that’s not gonna kill a fucking mouse.

Assi: What? No, these is for the kids train sets you know? They love it all this Thomas and the Tank Engine and all that. My little niece, she’s always watchin’ it on the telly.

Jim: Here – have you seen this? What does that say?

He hands one of the boxes to Assi and indicates the writing on it.

Assi: (squinting) I ain’t got no glasses with me today. Had to drive back from Goole at about ten mile an hour ‘cos I couldn’t see the friggin’ road. Track train or something… here Paul… read this.

Anka enters the shop. Jim directs his singing at her and she hurries out of his way.

Assi opens the second box and pulls out a statuette of a man with black hair and a thick mustache. The figure is wearing a dinner jacket and bow tie. There is nothing to indicate that it is a statue of Freddy Mercury. It could be any man with black hair and a mustache.

Assi: (to me) Ludo, can we clear a space for these? Somewhere prominent you know? Maybe clear out some of these dog foods and stuff and have them here near the counter innit, where people can see them?

Paul: I thought you said these were Freddy Mercury? Looks more like Cliff Thorburn.

Jim: Who the snooker player? (Taking the figure from Assi and inspecting it) it’s got some writing on the bottom but it’s in foreign.

Paul: You couldn’t read it if it was in English!

Jim: That’s true… Looks more like Magnum P.I. though than Freddy Mercury.

Paul: Tom Selleck…

Jim: No, he was a cop in America, called Magnum. Don’t know what the P. and the I stood for. Phil or Pat probably… I mean, we’re going back a bit…

Paul: He was played by Tom Selleck! (Under his breath): God this is like working in a fucking old folks home.

Assi: Nah, the guy who sold me ’em told me it was Freddy Mercury. Looks a bit like Tom Selleck but it’s actually Freddy Mercury. Says so on the bottom innit?

Paul: But it’s written in Polish or something…

Assi: Yeah, it says Freddy Mercury statue. The guy told me.

Anka approaches the counter. She looks at the statue and points at it. She says something in a foreign language.

Jim: My sentiments entirely my darling. What beautiful eyes you have.

Anka says something to Jim.

Jim: You Polish?

Anka nods.

He shows her the base of the statue. She nods and laughs.

Anka (holding up one figure): One.

Assi: One of these? (To Jim and Paul): see what did I tell you? The Polish love Freddy Mercury.

Paul: Do they?

Assi: What are you talking about? Queen! One of the biggest bands in Poland! Wait ’till she tells her friends about these. They’ll all be putting them on the… what’s that thing called above the fire…

Paul: They’ll be putting them on the fire.

Jim: The mantelpiece.

Assi: They’ll all have them on the mantelpiece! (To Anka he exclaims loudly) No Polish home is complete without a statue of Freddy Mercury. Isn’t that right lovie?

She is a bit startled but shows him the base of the statue and says something in Polish.

Assi: Speaking very slowly and a bit too loudly): Top quality. Royal Dolchester – top brand. Royal! By appointment to the royalty. Prince Charles has got a couple of these. Do you know Prince Charles? (He puts his fingers behind his ears so that they stick out).

Anka looks very puzzled.

After much sign language and use of google translator it is determined that the statues are actually of a Nobel Prize winning Polish politician called Lech Wałęsa.

Anka says of her purchase: I will give it to my husband as a joke. It is so bad.

Says Assi: We can just put a sticker over the bottom innit? People won’t know any different. Just say it’s Freddy Mercury. Or Cliff Thorburn. Depends which one sells better. Some people are into snooker. Some people like music. Some people like both! They’ll probably buy two innit?

Overheard anything funny lately? Please share it with us below. It’s more fun when you play along at home!

If you liked this, or even if you didn’t, you can read more from Hull’s finest at:

Like this:

I work Saturdays in a shop on H____ Road in Hull. Let’s call the shop Oddbury’s. Every Saturday I write down the funny things I hear. These are real conversations with real people about the things they’re buying and what they mean to them. Names have been changed to protect people’s identities. Paul is my co – worker.

Paul: Those are good ones. I use those. You can’t go wrong for a pound with those.

Trish: I’ve had these before, to do my legs. Cut me to ribbons they did. I looked like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre betime I’d finished. Still, they’re not for me – they’re for him (jabbing a thumb at Aaron).

Paul: Oh right.

Trish: Yeah. He needs to sort his hair out, don’t you?

Aaron is dressed in a track suit. He is much taller than Trish. At about 6ft tall he towers over his mother who approaches the height of her son’s shoulder. He is wearing a beanie hat and has his hood up so we can’t see what’s wrong with his hair.

Aaron: Grunts and gazes up at the ceiling.

Trish: I said don’t you?

Aaron: Ignores her and carries on staring at the ceiling.

Trish: (Shouting) Honestly, I have had it up to here with him. He’s been suspended from school haven’t you? I said haven’t you? Tell the man why.

Before giving Aaron a chance to respond she continues…

Because of his hair cut, that’s why! Monday, I gets a phone call from the school. Can I go and pick him up? Can I hell like. What’s up I say? He’s got an extreme hair cut. I says, what the hell are you talking about? I mean, I don’t call a short back and sides extreme. I mean, he puts gel in it but what lad his age doesn’t these days?

Jim: They look like Elvis with these quiffs these young lads that I see around. That’s a throw back to when I was young. If I still had hair… (he motions to Aaron) … I say, if I still had hair…

Aaron completely ignores him and Trish takes up the baton again…

Trish: Well this assistant head, I’ve spoken to him before – last time he got suspended – Oh, it’s not the first time, is it? I said is it?

Aaron ignores her.

Trish: No it’s not (she answers here own question). Tell them what you got suspended for last time. Go on.

Aaron ignores her.

Trish: Well I’ll tell them. It was that, what was it?

Aaron: Jesus Army…

Trish: What? What did you say? You are a SARKY. LITTLE. BASTARD.

Aaron: You asked me!

Trish: It was this religious thing that they were having in assembly. What was it?

Aaron: (Infuriated)I just said! The Jesus Army.

Trish: Don’t you give me any of that backchat you SARCASTIC. LITTLE… you are a sarcastic little bastard and one day that tongue of yours is going to… Anyway, what was it? This religious organisation, I’ve no idea who they are. I mean, me and Aaron, we’re not particularly religious are we? I mean, I believe in God but I don’t particularly want it shoved down my throat and I don’t want it shoved down my son’s either so I’m happy for him to express his opinion but, tell them what you said.

She doesn’t wait

Trish: I’ll tell them. Well one of them, these

Aaron: Jesus Army

Trish: Blokes is up there on stage talking away in front of the whole school…

Aaron: Year 10

Trish: Or whatever, talking about God and what not, and the Assistant Head, the one I spoke to, he did tell me on the phone that this fella had a look of Jesus but I mean, that’s no excuse, and our Aaron’s got up – stood up, in front of the whole school…

Aaron: Year 10.

Trish: And shouted – ‘Get back on the cross Jesus!’

There is a stunned silence.

Paul: What did he get suspended for this time?

Trish: Well, let me get back to where I am… Where was I?

Jim: His hair, you were on the phone to the Head.

Trish: (causticaly) It was the Assistant Head. The Head won’t speak to me. Anyway… yeah, he’s said, (adopts a ‘posh’ voice) ‘well Mrs Rankin, he might have left home with a short back and sides but that is most definitely not what he has turned up at the school gates with.’

Pauses for effect. Now everyone is staring at Aaron who is smirking ever so slightly.

Trish: Well, when he got home… tell them… tell them what you’ve got…He’s only gone and got the German flag shaved into his head. The German bloody flag!

Jim: It’s all this Dutch Land ’93. They’re all into. My daughter is. It’s one of these foreign things on telly.

Paul: (Lets out a sigh and rolls his eyes) Deutschland ’83. 1983, not ’93.

Jim: It’s quite good actually. A fair bit of shagging in it.

Aaron: Let’s out a suppressed laugh.

Trish: (exploding at her son. This provocation is more than her nerves can take.) YOU LOOK – LIKE A. FUCKING. IDIOT!

Aaron: Alright…

Trish: No! It is very much not alright! And you are going to shave that stupid bloody thing off your head as soon as we get home.

Aaron: I’m allowed to express an opinion.

Jim: Oh aye? Which opinion are you expressing at the moment. You look like a Rastafarian with that hat on. Show us what you got…

Trish: NO! Do not encourage him… it’s more than my nerves…

Aaron whips off the hat defiantly and glares, shaking with rage, at his mother. His head is shaved to the skin apart from where he has left unshaven, standing proud, in thick, jet – black hair, the shape of an enormous swastika.

Jim and Paul burst into hysterical laughter, falling around on the counter. There are tears rolling down their cheeks.

Aaron storms out of the shop and shouts, ‘fuck off!’ after him.

Says Trish of her purchase: I’m still buying these. I’ll hold him down and shave his fucking head myself if I’ve got to. ‘Cos I tell you. I will not tolerate it. I will not tolerate him lying in bed at home for another week fiddling with his bits while he’s watching Jeremy Kyle. He can get his head shaved and fuck off from under my feet back to that bloody school where he belongs.

Overheard anything funny lately? Please share it with us below. It’s more fun when you play along at home!

At the start of this post I’ve got to issue a disclaimer – it’s not that I’ve received this book gratis from the publisher (btw – just how do you get those free books to review?) or that I know the author or anything like that: it’s that I am by profession a Science teacher. This is a book, notionally at least, about neuroscience and so I must confess that I have a natural inclination to favour this book over the other two books that I’ve read so far: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying and It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be.

Some of you have noted a faintly derisive tone in the last two reviews and it’s true, my Self – Help Binge is slightly tongue in cheek, but it started with the most serious of intentions and I have genuinely attempted to live by the teachings of Marie Kondo and Paul Arden (at least during the week in which I read their books). Marie Kondo’s writing was annoying but the effect on the tidiness of our home was dramatic. Conversely, Paul Arden had me talking like one of those daily inspiration Twitter accounts and turned me into a really quite annoying person. Daniel Levitin’s Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload seems at first glance to have more potential: Levitin attempts to bring his learning to bear on the problem of our fantastically complicated everyday lives. I feel I certainly fit the bill as someone who leads an overly complex life: I am a teacher, often working upwards of 60 hours in a week, I am father to two small children who attend a plethora of clubs and activities, my wife works full time and I edit themagichappinessof.com which takes up all my spare time; so I have plenty of everyday commitments to juggle.

Levitin identifies attention as the most precious of the brain’s resources. Knowing where best to put your attention is a skill harnessed by a group of people the author assigns the tag HSPs: Highly Successful Persons. These people are CEOs, business leaders, social media tycoons, musicians, presidents and prime ministers. In short, they have a lot on their plate. Levitin argues that the HSPs are where they are because they leverage their considerable mental faculties in the right areas rather than wasting their attention on posting cat photos to Twitter or clicking on pop – ups promising ’15 quick tips to boost your productivity’. The phrase ‘paying – attention’ is one that we give little thought to but the author demonstrates how it has a basis in the way the brain is wired up.

Switching attention between several tasks actually incurs a neural ‘cost’ and the more times we switch between activities the more of a cost we incur. This leads to us becoming tired and tiredness affects our ability to make judgments. I was happy to learn that multi – tasking, something my wife claims to be expert at, is nothing of the sort. During writing this article I have checked Twitter 15 times so far (no one has mentioned me in a tweet, liked or re-tweeted anything of mine in that time scale), checked Facebook 22 times (no new notifications), checked my blog stats three or four times, checked Tumblr and my Google+ account a similar amount of times. All for no yield. This isn’t multi – tasking. This is just switching my attention from Twitter to Facebook to my blog to Google+ and round and round again. ‘Attention is a limited capacity resource’ says Levitin, ‘there are definite limits to the number of things we can attend to at once.’ He gives the example of driving along a street looking for a turning whilst listening to the radio or trying to hold a conversation. Most of us recognise that we tend to turn the radio down or pause the conversation whilst we scan for the correct street to turn down.

It is the same with all those social media accounts: if you are trying to write a book review then write a book review. Turn off Twitter, mute the updates alert on your phone, close the Facebook tab and focus your attention on the book review. All sounds eminently sensible and dare I say it, common sense, so far. The problem is, we are distractable beings. Indeed, we evolved 200, 000 years ago in an environment where things were fairly static. If something changed in your environment then it was a novelty and novelty meant potential danger. The human brain has evolved to attend to novelty. When your phone pings to tell you that you have a new Twitter notification your brain switches it’s focus to that. It takes willpower to ignore the update and focus on what you’re supposed to be doing. But this willpower incurs a cost. Levitin quotes a study by Glenn Wilson of Gresham College, London who found that having knowledge of an unread email in your inbox whilst you are trying to concentrate on a task can reduce you effective IQ by 10 points. That’s just knowing that the email is there, whether you intend to do anything about it or not.

A lot of Levitin’s advice might seem common sense: write everything down that you need to remember, turn off your phone whilst you’re trying to concentrate on a task, stop posting cat photos, organize your contacts, answer emails during a defined period of time each day, get enough sleep. It’s all stuff that you’ve heard elsewhere on productivity blogs or in lifestyle supplements. Where Levitin’s book sets itself apart is in showing the reader how all of this is routed in sound neuroscience.

It’s not easy to adopt new routines though. I’ve tried one strategy from the book which is something that I remember reading about as a teenager in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.‘Zen and…’ is a strange book and when I read it as a youngster I completely missed it’s function as a self – help book and read it mainly as a novel of ideas.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Prisig

The protagonist uses the idea of writing down his to – do list on a series of index cards. This is something that appealed to me. Each item on your to – do list is written on a separate card and then these cards are shuffled so that the item that is uppermost on your list of priorities sits on top. Once I have completed that task I rip the card up and throw it away. This is much more rewarding than crossing it off an enormous long to – do list. The reward element of completing a task should not be neglected. In a recent review of So you’ve been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson I discussed how social media is designed to hijack our attention systems by offering us a neurological reward – a quick release of dopamine, the hormone associated with our brain’s pleasure pathways – every time we complete a task.

Gaining an extra follower on Twitter or a share on Facebook, responding to a tweet or answering a query in an email counts as completing a task and so generates that little kick of dopamine that keeps you going back for more.

Now these ‘tasks’ are not really tasks of any significance at all. I might spend 15 minutes checking my emails, then 5 minutes going through my Twitter notifications and a further 5 minutes checking my Facebook notifications and responding to inbox messages. None of these little ‘tasks’ is really achieving anything significant but they all bring with them the feeling that I’m being busy. My brain is certainly busy switching from one thing to another constantly and I’m generating the little addictive reward of a kick of dopamine every time I complete a task but I’m not really achieving anything. And whilst doing all this insignificant ‘work’ I am neglecting significant things that need attending to like setting up a new savings account or securing some dental insurance at a reasonable price.

The index cards method of sorting my priorities worked out fine for me for the first two days. I assiduously wrote down every new thing that I needed to attend to and indexed it in my to – do pile. I sorted the pile at regular intervals and when the pile seemed to be getting too thick I whittled it down by actually doing some of the things in the pile. Great. Except keeping on top of the pile required self – control and motivation.

When the colourful index cards were fresh out of the packet they were a novelty and I attended to using them as one attends to a new pet. When I’d lived with the method for a couple of days I started forgetting to write out new cards when a task popped up or skipping it altogether, telling myself that it was too much hassle to fish the cards out and fill one out. Then I started to forget to check them altogether. I could remember what was written on the uppermost card but not the ones underneath.

I think the message from this book is that some of us are more organised than others but the key is that none of us evolved to be this way. Our brains are set up to handle a much less complicated world with less information to process and far fewer social contacts to keep track of. Feeling like we’re not on top of our everyday existence causes anxiety and can be stressful. We can teach ourselves to become organised though, but it takes training and practice, like mastering anything else. Oranisation is about embedding good habits into your day to day routine. The trick is to be consistent. Adopt a strategy and stick with it until it becomes a habit.

Next week I will post a review of my self – help progress so far; what’s worked, what’s gone wrong and what I’ve learnt so far. That will give me a bit of time to read the next book on my list which is Thrive by Arriana Huffington and was suggested by Its – Jme whose awesome blog you should check out.

If you’ve read any of the three books I’ve discussed so far I’d love to hear your thoughts and if you’d like to suggest a self – help title for me to try out then please comment below, tweet to @TmhoLudek or email themagichappinessof@gmail.com.

Like this:

Charity shopper is a weekly blog post. The rules are that I have to visit a charity shop every week and purchase something from it. I cannot leave the shop without making a purchase and I must use the purchase at least once. I will report every week on what I buy.

It’s more fun if you play at home: this week you have the opportunity to win all of the items I purchased. This is partly to spread the word about the Charity Shopper blog and partly because my wife has threatened divorce if I bring anymore stuff home from charity shops. To be in with a chance of winning all you have to do is contact me on twitter @TmhoLudek or email: themagichappinessof@gmail.com and I’ll enter you into the prize draw. If your name is pulled out of the hat then you win: 3 vinyl records by the incomparably smooth Sacha Distel, a bizarre book about a nose by Nikolai Gogol and 2 lovely postcards that you can send to friends (if you have any) or turn into decorative features to stick on your bedroom wall. Or the fridge. Or anywhere else…

You brought home three records by someone called Sacha Distel. Some kind of German techno DJ?

Hmm, not quite.

Swedish house?

Erm…

Serbian trance?

Distel was one of France’s greatest cultural exports.

Along with Bridget Bardot and camembert…

He was an internationally recognised crooner in the Tony Bennet/Dean Martin mould. Interestingly Distel and Bridget Bardot were an item towards the end of the 1950s.

It didn’t work out?

He went on to marry a downhill skier.

Bardot was a bit piste off?

Hmm. She went on to…

Do you get what I did there?

Yes. She went on to…

Piste off! Ha ha ha. Because he married a skier…

Well, au contraire actually…

A little early for a drink isn’t it?

It means on the contrary. Distel apparently learned of their break up in a press release issued by Bardot in 1959, so if anyone was, ahem, piste off, it was him. Bardot has had a turbulent personal life: married four times and a string of public affairs with high profile celebrities. Says her biographer Marie-Dominique Lelièvre: “She is the first woman to have publicly displayed her sexual freedom. Before Bardot, a woman who changed lover at the slightest whim was called a bitch, a salope. After Bardot, such a woman was simply seen as libérée.’

They make a handsome couple…

Hmmm.

Hmmmm.

What?

Sorry… erm…

You were saying?

Weren’t we talking about Sacha Distel? What became of him?

Well he went on to score numerous international hits as well as a staring role in the West End stage production of Chicago but is probably most famous for his rendition of Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head, his cover of the song from the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Shall we talk about The Nose?

Do we have to?

Well you bought it. You didn’t enjoy it?

Erm… well, it will certainly stick in the memory…

How so?

To summarise the plot: a man wakes up without his nose and realises it has been cut off. His nose is at large around town (literally – it has grown to the same size as an adult human) and attains the status of a minor celebrity…

This sounds bonkers!

That’s putting it mildly. At various points in the book the narrator interrupts and during the closing paragraph admits that not even he/she (what do you call the omnipresent narrator in a book – it?) can make sense of what’s going on.

This chap’s first attempt at writing something was it?

Hardly. The Encyclopedia Britannica says ‘his part in Russian literature was enormous.[…] Gogol was among the first authors to have revealed Russia to itself.’ The Nose is a satirical work about… erm… something.

Sounds absurd. Why would anyone pay money for such clap – trap?

Well indeed. The narrator of The Nose ponders exactly the same point. Interestingly, the copy I bought from The Oxfam Shop in Pocklington had the corner of page 17 turned down, as though whoever owned it had got that far through the book and given up. The entire thing is only 35 very short pages long!

Gone for a lie down no doubt.

Perhaps.

And the postcards?

They were just on the counter by the till so I bought them on a whim.

Shall we finish on a quote from The Nose?

‘Strangely enough, I mistook it for a gentleman at first. Fortunately I hadmy spectacles with me so I could see it was really a nose.’

I think that says all we need to know about that.

To be in with a chance of winning all you have to do is contact me on twitter @TmhoLudek or email: themagichappinessof@gmail.com and I’ll enter you into the prize draw.

If you’ve enjoyed this week’s foray into secondhand land then check out the previous blog posts here:

Like this:

I work Saturdays in a shop on H____ Road in Hull. Let’s call the shop Oddbury’s. Every Saturday I write down the funny things I hear. These are real conversations with real people about the things they’re buying and what they mean to them. Names have been changed to protect people’s identities. Paul is my co – worker.

Paul alerts my attention to a car that has pulled up to the kerb opposite the shop. The driver is wearing a crash helmet! Jennifer gets out of the car and enters the shop, still wearing the crash helmet.

Jennifer: (muffled because she can’t be heard due to the helmet): do you sell sanitary towels?

Paul: Look out, it’s The Stig. Is this a robbery?

Jennifer: what? Oh this? (She wrestles the crash helmet off with some difficulty).

Jim: (to Paul) She could pull my helmet off.

Jennifer: I always wear a crash helmet in the car now since I got shunted up the back end last year.

Jim laughs at this and repeats: shunted up the back end!

Jennifer: Yes. It was at the roundabout near the Humber Bridge. I was waiting and then I set off to go and then I stopped and then… it just all went wrong. A Mercedes drove straight into me! Bang! Whiplash. And I cut my head open on the steering wheel. I was in hospital for a week.

Jim: my wife’s in hospital at the moment with a bad back.

Jennifer: Is she really? Oh the poor woman. Oh it’s a terrible place, honestly, it’s… the food is horrendous. But a bad back. That must be simply awful (makes sad face).

Paul: my ex wife was in hospital once with that – a bad back.

Jim: They call it sciatica. That’s what the doc says it is, sciatica.

Jennifer: Oh god! My Nan had that! She was really in quite a bad way and she got taken into hospital. I went to visit her on the ward but it was a very disturbing experience.

Jim: Oh?

Jennifer: Yes, one of the women on the ward was shouting out constantly. Just shouting and shouting, she was really distressed. And then she took her clothes off and bit one of the nurses!

Jim: A sciatica ward?

Paul: Are you sure that wasn’t a psychiatric ward?

Jennifer: Oh yes. That was it. A sciatictra ward.

Jennifer bought a pack of sanitary towels. Jennifer says: I know a lot of people think I’m slightly eccentric but I’m just me. I’m just a bit different and there’s nothing wrong with that. I was checking my make up the day that guy drove into the back of me so I suppose it was my fault but since the accident I’ve suffered with anxiety. I won’t drive anywhere without my helmet on now. I think it should be made mandatory. I honestly do. You wouldn’t be able to ride a motorbike without a crash helmet. A car’s no different. Apart from you’re inside the vehicle rather than sat on it.

If you liked this week’s you’ll love the last two in the series! You can read them here:

‘Not sure where they got the name, but it’s not la Houston or indeed US sitcom star Whitney Cummings. They mainly write about breakups [..] Demos were initially recorded in a Wisconsin cabin, to give them the quality of lost recordings: think Bon Iver, with elements of folk and country, only given a Chicago soul makeover. If Curtis Mayfield fronted a stoner-rock band …

Whitney in the video for their song Southern Nights

While the music is buoyant, lyrically we’re in bummed-out territory. “The subject matter isn’t happy, but it sounds really happy,” Ehrlich offers, helpfully. No Woman opens with Rhodes keyboards, some sad trumpet and a wistful voice that skirts the perimeters of folk, country and soul. “I’ve been going through a change,” sings Ehrlich in his disarming high register, like Kurt Wagner of Lambchop after being kicked in the cojones…

On this, their fifth and greatest album, Kurt Wagner‘s ever-expanding 17-piece country soul outfit aren’t fucking around. Absorbing and magnifying the territory explored on its immediate predecessors, ‘What Another Man Spills’ and ‘Thriller’, ‘Nixon’ is by any criteria an astonishing work.

Given the sheer sonorous delight of the Lambchop sound, the ‘Pet Sounds’ comparison is understandable if ultimately misleading. Once the magical opener ‘The Old Gold Shoe’ – strewn with images of loss and abundance – takes flight you are borne aloft and thereafter free to explore a cosmic American ideal that would do Brian Wilson or Gram Parsons, or anyone proud. But as a singer and songwriter, Wagner operates at a remove from both his contemporaries and predecessors, his gentle imprecations, salty asides and off-kilter musings delivered in a raw falsetto that often sounds like a ravaged, confessional and mischievous ghost.

Gram Parsons is an artist with a vision as unique and personal as those of Jagger-Richard, Ray Davies, or any of the other celebrated figures. Parsons may not have gone to the gate as often as the others, but when he has he’s been strikingly consistent and good. I can’t think of a performance on record any more moving than Gram’s on his “Hot Burrito No. 1,” and the first album of his old band, the Flying Burrito Bros.Gilded Palace of Sin, is a milestone. The record brought a pure country style and a wrecked country sensibility to rock, setting a standard that no other country-rock effort has begun to challenge.

Gram Parsons

Parsons is a south-Georgia boy with a Harvard education, a big inheritance, and a tendency to melancholy. His central theme has always been that of the innocent Southern boy tossed between the staunch traditions and strict moral code he was born to and the complex, ambiguous modern world. He realizes that both are corrupt, but he survives by keeping a hold on each while believing neither. Lurking in the innards of all those tunes about how the city is full of temptations for a good old boy, and how his girl has left him, lured away by Satan, is Gram’s ongoing preoccupation with loss and despair, much more personal and powerful than the banal sentiments that make the songs so enjoyable initially.

In advance interviews, Davies had noted that this might be the last time he will perform these songs. He has written an album inspired by the Stateside life experiences he described in his recent book, Americana, and after touring that, he plans to come off the road for a while. When he unveiled two of those songs, everyone sat down, wet seats or not. “You see?” he quipped drily, “it takes balls to do that”.

It was a rollercoaster show, then, miraculously beset by only a few further spits and spots of rain, but turbulent in its undercurrents. There were several swipes at Ray’s younger sibling, Dave – their unceasing fraternal spat has been the stumbling block to a Kinks reunion. “The Kinks will live on forever!” he trumpeted at one point, then added in mock paranoia, “No, don’t cheer, my brother’s spies are here!”

The Rolling Stones Album Review: The Rolling Stones on The BBC website

The Rolling Stones’ debut single was a Chuck Berry cover, their second a Lennon-McCartney tune, and third a Buddy Holly number. Their first EP was packed with similarly cynically mainstream and/or romantic fare. Only with the release of their eponymous debut LP did they reaffirm the bluesiness in which they were steeped and which had obtained them a record contract in the first place.

Released in April 1964, The Rolling Stones was – according to guitarist Keith Richards – half-comprised of rough mixes precipitously rushed onto the market by their manager (and the album’s nominal producer) Andrew Loog Oldham. It’s a testament to the group’s brilliance that the result was still the best album to emerge from the early 1960s British blues boom.

The Rolling Stones cover shot for their debut album

It can’t be seriously posited as a heavyweight artistic statement insofar as the Jagger/Richards songwriting team had yet to develop: only three of the tracks are originals. Moreover, Mick Jagger sounds like the Welfare State whitey he is.

Set against the dependency on covers and the inexperienced vocalist, however, is a truly cooking and imaginative band. Drummer Charlie Watts and bassist Bill Wyman provide a brawny frame for the intermeshing guitars of Richards and Brian Jones as the ensemble lovingly deliver some of their favourite shots of rhythm ‘n’ blues.

Between the breakneck travelogue opener Route 66 and the madcap parting shot Walking the Dog, however, the Stones crucially sidestep the mistake committed by many others on the scene in thinking that high quality is enough. The shimmering surrealism of Mona, the sensuality of I’m a King Bee, the romanticism of Tell Me and the soulfulness of You Can Make It If You Try create a variety of moods and textures that obviates ‘blueswailing’ one-dimensionality.

Chuck Berry practically invented rock ’n’ roll, and at 85, he’s earned the right to do whatever he wants onstage. He knows it. We know it. And if you don’t like it, the exit is on your left.

So his rare appearance Saturday night at the Fort Worth Convention Center Ballroom wasn’t so much a concert as it was an hour long test of audience loyalty. In what might be the last Chuck Berry show they ever see, the fans were far more loyal than they probably should have been.

Chuck Berry onstage

To Berry’s credit, he readily admitted how awful the show got at times.

“That was not a good one,” he said, after forgetting the lyrics to “Maybellene” and aborting the song. He quickly abandoned another tune, explaining with a smile, “That was supposed to be ‘Nadine.’”

After starting and discarding a particularly wretched version of “My Ding-a-Ling,” he said, “When I make a boo-boo, I expect boos, so give me a ‘Boo!’” he said.

But not a single fan took him up on the offer. The seated crowd of a few hundred had come to praise the master, not heckle him.

Backed by a tight quintet featuring his son Charles Berry Jr. on guitar, Berry found the groove every now and then — duck-walking for a few feet in “Reelin’ and Rockin’” and nailing the bent-string notes in “Carol” that he scolded Keith Richards for missing in the documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll.

But those were exceptions in a set where Berry struggled repeatedly to stay in sync with his band. He jokingly offered up lots of excuses, including his failing eyesight and hearing loss suffered from years of excess volume. “I’ve been playing rock ’n’ roll since 1840,” he quipped. “Sometimes I hear B and it sounds like C.”

It is an uncomfortable truth but lots of people buying this book will have been guided by the same motivation that causes us to slow down at the scene of a car accident on the motorway. In the UK this behaviour is called ‘rubber – necking’. Though most of us would attest that we find it disagreeable to rubber – neck, the tailbacks on Britain’s roads every Friday night would suggest that plenty of us are morbidly curios enough to see what it looks like when a life spins out of control.

The modern phenomenon of Twitter shaming described in ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed’ ranks fairly highly amongst the things that can wake me up screaming in the middle of the night. Just how bad does it feel when 20 thousand or 50 thousand, or in the case of Justine Sacco, the PR executive who tweeted an ill advised joke, when over 1.2 million people focus their fury on you?

Ronson chronicles public shaming from it’s medieval role as a weapon of justice to some of the worst social media shamings of recent times. He travels the world interviewing the victims about their experiences before, during, and as they try to piece their lives back together, after the shaming. The case studies range from journalists caught fabricating stories to a learning support worker who defiled a national cemetery. In each case the spiral from basically happy, ordinary people, to central figures in the story of their own demise, is precipitously fast.

Social media presents a fascinating opportunity to study the dynamics of large populations. Never before in human history have we all been so interconnected. The theory that everyone is connected to everyone else in the world by just 6 degrees of separation was postulated by the Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy in the 1920s but new research shows that the figure needs updating. Studies of Facebook reveal it’s more like half that number, and with the opportunity for complete strangers to follow you, I would imagine that Twitter returns an even smaller degree of separation.

The upshot of all this connectedness is that we’re dealing with a social landscape that we didn’t evolve to operate in. In his book The Organized Mind (incidentally also the subject of this week’s self help binge) Daniel Levitin gives and illuminating analogy,

Imagine you are living in the year 1200 […] You know a couple of hundred people, and you’ve known most of them all your life. Strangers are regarded with suspicion because it is so very unusual to encounter them. The number of people you’d encounter in a lifetime was fewer than the number of people you’d walk past during rush hour in present – day Manhattan.

Now the number of people we can reach in the click of a mouse button dwarfs the world population in the year 1200. Something humans are particularly bad at grasping is the scale and the reach of social media. Just why do otherwise normal, well – adjusted people descend into a vicious frenzy of denouncement when a target emerges on Twitter? Ronson investigates the theory of group madness as a possible explanation.

Published in 1895, Gustav Le Bon’s The Crowd, was the central text in the study of crowd dynamics. The work is referenced in Bill Buford’s superlative study of British football hooliganism in the 1980s. During the 80s displays mass social unrest could be witnessed in virtually every city centre in the country as rival hooligan ‘firms’ battled each other for supremacy on the terraces. The scale and brutality of the violence is staggering when regarded from a contemporary vantage point.

Buford addresses the question of why thousands of young men up and down the country would turn out every Saturday afternoon to gouge, kick, punch, stab, slash and burn their way up and down the country:

why do young males riot every Saturday? They do it for the same reason that another generation drank too much, or smoked dope, or took hallucinogenic drugs, or behaved badly or rebelliously. Violence is their antisocial kick, their mind-altering experience, an adrenaline-induced euphoria that might be all the more powerful because it is generated by the body itself, with, I was convinced, many of the same addictive qualities that characterize synthetically-produced drugs.

Social media certainly has it’s addictive properties. That adrenaline – induced euphoria that Buford talks about? Every re-tweet, new follower or like that you receive on Twitter creates a little release of dopamine – a hormone associated with the brain’s response to pleasurable stimuli. So social media has a measurable effect on the brain’s biochemistry.

Ronson discusses the feedback effect:

We express our opinion that Justine Sacco is a monster. We are instantly congratulated for this…

And so we are more likely to believe that it is true. He also notes that you are only likely to share information on Twitter that is likely to go down well with your circle of followers.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is a difficult read in many ways. Not because of any defect in the writing which is lucid and intelligent, or the arguments which are backed by infallible reasoning. It is a difficult read because it holds up a mirror that shows a distorted reflection of society. A society viewed through the warped lens of social media. A social world where the voices of moderation and reason have been filtered out of the conversation leaving only the raging poles of opinion. Is 170 characters too short to sum up all the shades of meaning and nuances of language needed to communicate effectively? I think it probably is, and maybe the move to abolish the character limit for a Tweet might be a good thing.

Comment below or tweet me. Let me know what you thought if you’ve read this book or any of the others mentioned. Happy reading.

Every week I try a different self – help guide’s life advice. Last week I reviewed Marie Kondo’s The Life – Changing Magic of Tidying. This week I tackle Paul Arden’s It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be.

Sandwiched somewhere between a career’s advice lecture and an evangelical call to self – improvement for anyone with a creative bent, this little book is small enough to fit in the pocket and short enough to read in a matter of minutes. That’s not to say the ideas in it aren’t profound though.

Arden’s little book was a sensation when it was first published in 2003 and has entered the hearts and minds of many an ambitious, bright young thing since. Arden’s prose is direct and bossy, but his message is never less than engaging and thought provoking.

‘So how good do you want to be?’ he asks at the outset.

So how good do you want to be?

Well, I don’t know, you think. Probably quite good. Fairly soon though you get the sense that this isn’t good enough for Paul Arden. ‘You can achieve the unachievable.’ he exhorts. By the third page in I’m feeling ecstatic.

Many of the messages are counter – intuitive: ‘It’s right to be wrong,’ ‘fail, fail again, fail better,’why do we strive for excellence when mediocrity is required?’ And Arden’s wisdom is delivered with such clear – eyed certainty that you get caught up in it. The layout of every page is delicious, the bold titles and large text allied with clean, monochrome images mean that it’s easy on the eye. You wouldn’t expect anything less from a former Executive Creative Director at Saatchi and Saatchi though would you?

So I’ve been trying to apply the book’s message of ambition, self promotion and positive thinking to my life. I’ve been relentlessly chipper at work. Emma, my colleague, took me aside to ask me if everything was alright. ‘You keep talking to everyone like you’re reading from a leadership manual,’ she said worriedly. ‘Have you been getting enough sleep?’ ‘Without a goal it’s difficult to score,’ I replied, assertively.

I’ve designed myself some business cards. I’m a teacher so they say ‘Headteacher’ on them.

Get your own business cards. With a made up job title on them.

I handed them out in the staff room at work which went down well. People asked me if I’d gone mad and the real Headteacher said he wants a meeting with me. ‘Getting fired can be a positive career move,’ Arden assures me on page 70. Which is comforting to know.

It’s not How Good you Are…’ is not really a self – help book. You will find it in Waterstone’s in the grey area to the right of the self-help section headed ‘smart thinking’. I’m not sure how much of this book is smart thinking and how much has little thinking behind it. If you suspend your judgement then it’s freshness and energy is infectious.

And then sometimes you come across a picture of some pigeons on a plinth and you are a little baffled.

‘Don’t be afraid of silly ideas.’ (Page 58)

Next week I’m trying Daniel Levitin’s The Organised Mind. If you have read any of the books I’ve discussed on my blog or would like to suggest a favourite self – help book for me to try out then please comment, tweet @TmhoLudek, check out my Facebook or email themagichappinessof@gmail.com.

Like this:

Charity shopper is a weekly blog post. The rules are that I have to visit a charity shop every week and purchase something from it. I cannot leave the shop without making a purchase and I must use the purchase at least once. I will report every week on what I buy.

It’s more fun if you play at home: if you would like to be next week’s Charity Shopper all you have to do is contact me on twitter @TmhoLudek or email: themagichappinessof@gmail.com with details of what you’ve purchased and be able to answer some simple questions about why you bought it (otherwise I’ll just do it again!).

Date: Sun 7.02.2016

Shop: Age UK, 15 Market Place, Pocklington, East Yorkshire YO42 2AS

Purchase: 1 book: How to Be a Brit by George Mikes and a CD: Shall We Dance? Elegant Classics from the 30s.

Cost: £1.98

Lets start with the CD; what motivated you to buy a collection of Jazz standards from the 30s?

I thought it had ‘Cheek to Cheek,’ on it – the song Fred Astaire sings to Ginger Rogers in the film Top Hat.

So romantic!

Indeed.

And does it?

No.

The cheek!

Though I believe the answer to the question, ‘shall we dance,’ should always be ‘yes’ so I bought it anyway.

And the book? How to Be a Brit?

Correct.

Sounds like a pamphlet from a right leaning think tank. Nothing to do with the government’s ‘British Values’ agenda is it?

Hardly. George Mikes was a Hungarian immigrant. It’s his take on British manners. Regarding English attitudes he has this to say: ‘In England it is bad manners to be clever, to assert something confidently. It may be your own personal view that two and two make four, but you must not state it in a self-assured way, because this is a democratic country and others may be of a different opinion.’

A clever dick by the sounds of it.

Umm… possibly, though I didn’t buy it for the witty analysis of the famed British stiff upper lip.

Well why did you buy it?

The cover design caught my eye. I thought it would look good on my bookshelf. Or on the coffee table.

Tsk! Shakespeare and Milton will be spinning in their graves. Don’t you know you should never judge a book by it’s cover?

Not true. How to Be a Brit is published as a Penguin Classic. The minimal, two tone design with large blocks of colour has represented quality since its’ inception in 1935.

Some of the cover designs are as lauded as the books inside them. There are Pinterest boards dedicated to them. You can buy your favourite cover on a T -Shirt, as a Penguin Classics deck chair, tote bags… the list is endless.

What were you saying about quality? Wasn’t Morrisey’s debut novel published last year as a Penguin Classic?

You mean List of the Lost? Ah, it’s not in the Classics imprint. It’s merely a Penguin book. His memoir Autobiography, however, was slotted straight in the Penguin Classics stable.

Ah. One thing though – if you click on the link above and look carefully you’ll see that Chris, although a very good graphic artist, should be careful what he wishes for!

The charity shopper will be back next week. If you have any particular items you would like to see me discussing (with myself) or if you would like to have a go at being the charity shopper yourself then comment below, Tweet me @TmhoLudek or email: themagichappinessof@gmail.com.

I work Saturdays in a shop on H____ Road in Hull. Let’s call the shop Oddbury’s. Every Saturday I write down the funny things I hear. These are real conversations with real people about the things they’re buying and what they mean to them. Names have been changed to protect people’s identities. Paul is my co – worker.

Margaret: I’m looking for something to get the weeds out of my patio – you know where they sprout up between the flag stones? And we’ve got some on the drive too but that’s got – well, I don’t know how to describe it but like…

Paul: You need a flame thrower.

Margaret: A flame thrower? Well I haven’t got one of those have I?

Paul: (Rolls his eyes) Then you’ll need this stuff – follow me.

(He paces to the other side of the shop very purposefully and Margaret has to trot to keep up with him)

Paul: This is the stuff (proffering something that looks like screen-wash in a frosted blue 1 litre plastic bottle). It’s brilliant. Do any job that. Kill absolutely anything.

Scottish Malcolm: Och nae- they’re nae broken. They just did’nae work like. I did’nae get a shag out of it! Where’s Paul?

Spying Paul he strides over.

Scottish Malcolm: Paul, those Christmas lights were a waste of money.

Paul: (Ignoring him, carries on serving Margaret). Do you know what the best thing for killing mice is?

Margaret: (Bemused by this turn in the conversation) A mouse trap?

Paul: Ha! (as if that were a ridiculous thing to suggest). No, this stuff – the same stuff you use on your weeds.

(In a conspiratorial whisper): You put a cap full of it out on the night, before you go to bed. Then, during the night they come out and take a drink of it – it’s sweet you see – they like the taste of it. Then when you wake up in the morning they’re all lying around the cap, kind of asleep like.

Scottish Malcolm: Asleep?

Paul: Yeah – well -dead mainly. It burns a hole in their stomach and their intestines fall out.

Scottish Malcolm: Disgusting.

Paul: I can’t stand them either.

Scottish Malcolm: I mean it’s animal cruelty. But, hey, do you suppose it gets them pissed?